Public Interest Speakers 2005-2006

The eighth annual, year-long, Public Interest Law Speakers Series, "Access to Justice: The Social Responsibility of Lawyers," brings to Washington University nationally and internationally prominent experts in such areas as international human rights, the economics of poverty, racial justice, capital punishment, clinical legal education, government public service, and pro bono private practice.

Each program is free of charge and eligible for one MCLE credit hour. Parking passes may be purchased at the door. For more information, contact Elizabeth Niehaus, Clinical Program Coordinator, (314) 935-6419 or ekniehaus@wulaw.wustl.edu.

Speakers

The School of Law’s 2005-06 Public Interest Law Speakers Series, “Access to Justice: The Social Responsibility of Lawyers,” presents the following speakers:

Marc Galanter

Galanter is the John and Rylla Bosshard Professor of Law and South Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, and LSE Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the author of a number of highly regarded studies of litigation and disputing in the United States, including “Why the ‘Haves’ Come Out Ahead: Speculations on the Limits of Legal Change,” one of the most-cited articles in the legal literature. He also is recognized as a leading American scholar of the Indian legal system. He is the author of "Competing Equalities: Law and the Backward Classes in India", and "Law and Society in Modern India"; served as advisor to the Ford Foundation in India; and is an Honorary Professor of the National Law School of India.

Bright is an nationally recognized expert on capital punishment, a member of the commission, and Director of the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, Georgia, a public interest legal project that provides representation to persons facing the death penalty and to prisoners in challenges to cruel and unusual conditions of confinement in eleven southern states. He is a former staff attorney for the Appalachian Research and Defense Fund, and a former trial attorney for the Public Defender Service in Washington, D.C. He has served as a visiting lecturer at several law schools, including Yale, Harvard, Georgetown, and Emory. Bright is a member of the commission and director of the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, Georgia. He has served as a visiting lecturer at Yale and Harvard Law Schools. There will be a reception in the Janite Lee Reading Room, sponsored by the Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis, on Tuesday, November 1, 2005, 3:30-4:30 p.m.

Martha Chamallas

Chamallas is the Robert J. Lynn Chair in Law at The Ohio State University and a leading scholar in torts, employment law, and legal issues affecting women. She is the author of several articles and the treatise, Introduction to Feminist Legal Theory.

David Boies

Boies was special trial counsel for the U. S. Department of Justice in the Microsoft antitrust lawsuit and lead counsel for Vice President Al Gore in the 2000 election litigation. The chairman of the law firm Boies, Schiller, and Flexner LLP, Boies is former Chief Counsel and Staff Director for the U.S. Senate Antitrust Subcommittee and the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, and author of Courting Justice and Public Control of Business.

Cashin, a professor of law at Georgetown University, will be in residence as a Washington University Distinguished Visiting Scholar. A former law clerk for Justice Thurgood Marshal and an adviser to President Bill Clinton on urban and economic policy, Cashin is the author of the recent book, "The Failures of Integration: How Race and Class Are Undermining the American Dream."

Geoffrey Stone

“Civil Liberties in Wartime”January 25, 2006 - 11:00 a.m.Co-sponsored by the George Warren Brown School of Social Work

Stone is the Harry Kalven, Jr. Distinguished Service Professor of Law, former Dean of the School of Law, and former Provost at The University of Chicago. Former law clerk for Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., Stone is the author of the recent book, Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism. He filed briefs in the "Korematsu, Rasul, Al Odah, and Jose Padilla" Supreme Court cases.

Coontz is professor of history and family studies at The Evergreen State College and director of research and public education for the Council on Contemporary Families. She is the author of several books, including her most recent book, "Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy", or "How Love Conquered Marriage."

Buel is clinical professor of law at the University of Texas at Austin and the founder and co-director of the Domestic Violence Clinic. She is the co-founder of the University of Texas Voices Against Violence program that has developed a system of comprehensive, coordinated services for victims of sexual assault, relationship violence, and stalking, and the University of Texas Institute on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault that focuses on research, pedagogy, and direct services.

Randy Barnett

"The Presumption of Liberty and the Public Interest: Medical Marijuana and Fundamental Rights"February 16, 2006 - 12:00 p.m.Co-sponsored by the Federalist Society Student Chapter

Barnett is the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Law at Boston University and the author of the book, "Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty." He argued the U.S. Supreme Court case, "Gonzalez v. Raich," involving the right to use marijuana for medical purposes.

Jennifer Gordon

Lawyers and Labor: The Role of Law in Organizing Low-Wage Workers”February 22, 2006 - 11:00 a.m.Webster Society Annual Speaker

Gordon is an associate professor of law at Fordham University and author of the recent book, "Suburban Sweatshops: The Fight for Immigrant Rights." Prior to joining the academy, Gordon founded the Workplace Project in New York, a nationally recognized grassroots workers center that organized low-wage Latino immigrants. She also worked as a consultant to the AFL-CIO, the Campaign for Human Development of the Catholic Church, and the Ford Foundation. A magna cum laude graduate of both Harvard/Radcliffe College and Harvard Law School, Gordon was named “Outstanding Public Interest Advocate of the Year” in 1998 by the National Association for Public Interest Law (now Equal Justice Works) and was awarded a MacArthur Prize Fellowship in 1999.

Pamela Karlan

Karlan is the Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Professor of Public Interest Law at Stanford University. Former law clerk for Justice Harry A. Blackmun, Karlan is the co-author of "The Law of Democracy: Legal Structure of the Political Process" and "Civil Rights Actions: Enforcing the Constitution." She teaches Constitutional Law, Constitutional Rights, and Supreme Court Litigation Clinic.

Tom Beauchamp

Who Ought to Decide about Physician-Assisted Hastening of Death?”March 8, 2006 - 11:00 a.m.Co-sponsored by the Department of Philosophy and Center for the Study of Ethics and Human Values

Beauchamp is professor of philosophy and a senior research scholar at Georgetown University Kennedy Institute of Ethics. He is co-author of the book, "The Human Use of Animals: Case Studies in Ethical Choice."

James Anaya

Indian Givers: What Indigenous Peoples Have Contributed to International Human Rights Law”March 22, 2006 - 11:00 a.m.University Distinguished Visiting Scholar, co-sponsored by the Native American Law Student Association

Anaya, the James J. Lenoir Professor of Human Rights Law and Policy at The University of Arizona, will be in residence as a Washington University Distinguished Visiting Scholar. Anaya is an Associate Justice for the Court of Appeals for the Yavapai-Prescott Indian Tribe, former staff attorney for the Indian Law Resource Council and the National Indian Youth Council, and author of Indigenous Peoples and International Law. He teaches Constitutional Law, International Human Rights and Indigenous Peoples, and Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Clinic.

Gerald López

López is professor of clinical law and Director of the Center for Community Problem Solving at New York University. Lopez co-founded at the Lawyering for Social Change Program at Stanford and the Program in Public Interest Law and Policy at UCLA, among the nation’s first sequenced curricula in public interest work. He is the author of "Rebellious Lawyering," one of the most influential books about progressive law practice and community problem solving. Lopez currently teaches a Community Outreach, Education, and Organizing Clinic; a Community Economic Development Clinic; and an undergraduate course on Latinas and Latinos in New York City.

Co-sponsored by the Clinical Education Program, the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, the Journal of Law & Policy and the George Warren Brown School of Social Work.